Dear PR Person: Excuses for not doing supremely excellent work are dwindling yet again, thanks to a new service called BackType. 

BackType lets you “find, follow and share comments from across the web.” Whenever you fill out the “URL” field in a blog’s comment form, BackType tracks it.  If you’re pretty prolific online, use BackType to keep tabs on your past conversations.

And it goes one better, in terms of Blogger Relations: BackType also allows you to track and subscribe to some of the most influential folks on the Web, as shown in the screenshot accompanying this post.

So now you can NOT ONLY read these influencer’s blogs, but know what other blogs THEY read — and what’s on their minds.  Why wouldn’t you do this?  It’s all about relevancy, recency and respect:  by reading their own recent blog posts as well as their recent comments on other blogs, as a PR pro you show a true interest in your “target.”  You learn how to not waste their time.

Additionally, you get a good sense for the influencer’s own favorite blogs.  So you can try getting a “hit” at one of these 2nd-tier blogs, feeling confident that it will be seen by your ultimate target.

Example: “Michael Arrington posts a lot of comments at Signal vs. Noise, mathewingram.com, VentureBeat and Online Media Cultist, et al. If I get a hit at Online Media Cultist before I even approach Arrington, he may be more likely to listen to my pitch when the time comes, because he’s seen that a blogger he respects has already written something.”

Plus, you can get a good feel for the types of content that inspire your “targeted” blogger to react in the first place.

All of this advice is not meant to create a fresh corps of “stalkerazzi” but merely to supplement the solid research the PR pro should engage in before ever reaching out to a blogger in the first place.

Go.  Do good things.

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